The International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) will at last be held in its usual month of December this year, for eight days. The fest, which had to be postponed to later months in the last two years due to the outbreak of COVID-19, will this year be held from December 9 to 16, in its usual venue of Thiruvananthapuram. This will be the 27th edition of the annual festival, which is a grand event for the state, bringing thousands of delegates and guests from the rest of the country and outside India, celebrating world cinema.
The festival will have its usual categories of international competition, Indian cinema now, Malayalam cinema today and world cinema among other packages. As always, the competition category will have movies from Asian, African and Latin American countries. The stipulation for the competition movies is that they should have been released between September 1, 2021 and August 31, 2022. Entries for the competition section can be made from August 11. Applications for online entries begin on the evening of September 11, on the website iffk.in.
This is the first time that an edition is being conducted so soon after another. The 26th edition, which should have been originally held in December last year, had to be pushed to March 2022 owing to another wave of COVID-19. The March fest was conducted in the usual manner over eight days in Thiruvananthapuram. The best competition film was won by Clara Sola, a film from Costa Rica, directed by Nathalie Alvarez Mesen. The best director award was won by Ines Maria Barrionuevo for the Argentinian film Camila Saldra Esta Noche.
The year before, however, the fest was conducted in a restricted manner, following COVID-19 protocol, and was held across four regions in the state to limit the crowd.